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Google has launched an early preview of their new programming language for web application developers. Known as Dart, the language intends to overcome some of the inadequacies found in JavaScript and eventually evolve into a solid platform for structured web programming.
Dart was introduced on Google’s official code blog by Lars Bak, a Google software engineer for the Dart team. Bak outlined three design goals of the new language in the post.
The first is to create a structured yet flexible language for web programming. Additionally the team wants Dart to feel familiar and natural, thus making it easier for programmers from another language to pick up on. Finally, Dart aims to be a high performance language that demonstrates its speed on all modern web browsers and environments.
One key element of Dart is the fact that it’s an optionally typed language, making it a good alternative for small and large projects. For example, a one-person project would likely use dynamic typing which means they will add variables without defining their data type. For larger projects, it’s a good idea to define data types to keep everyone on the same page. This is called static typing. With Dart, you can start with a dynamic typing project and later convert it to static.
The early preview comes with a basic set of libraries and tools for checking, compiling and running code in the new language. As of now, no browsers support Dart, not even Google’s own Chrome, but the team is planning to explore this option. For now, developers can use the compiler to translate code from Dart to JavaScript to run on any browser.
User Comments: 5
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VitalyT said:
Good idea, but if old browsers cannot support it, it will be an impossible sell to web developers. Way too many people are still on the crappy IE6 - IE8. This is why HTML5 progress is so slow.
I read about the technology, but until it starts working in old browsers, I'm not touching it.
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Hmm; the Wiki on Dart contains a link to an explanation and critical comments
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VitalyT said:
Good idea, but if old browsers cannot support it, it will be an impossible sell to web developers. Way too many people are still on the crappy IE6 - IE8. This is why HTML5 progress is so slow.
I read about the technology, but until it starts working in old browsers, I'm not touching it.
Look, I am in no way a fan of Google AT ALL! But there is nothing worse than having to use JS! This is made worse - ten fold - if you are used to using a great server language like php and then you get to JS and it is like taking six steps backwards.
That may be true what you have just stated but any step in the right direction should be praised and encouraged?
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Google is working hard to introduce new things these days. But the market is always resistant to non-Microsoft things. That silly Microsoft has damaged the PC.
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This is made worse - ten fold - if you are used to using a great server language like php and then you get to JS and it is like taking six steps backwards.AMEN. JS is not a server side component and you lose all the
PHP / Perl modules already available.
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